[Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.]

The Incident: Wherein I reflect on an unpleasant episode from the past and realize I should have known then, if not before.

cw: Jealousy, possessiveness, controlling behavior, and possible intimate partner abuse.

Our summer 2017 road trip was the first time we visited Glenn and Alexandra after Glenn semi-broke it off with Jill. I use the prefix “semi” because Glenn was still willing to have sex with her; it was only the emotional content that he couldn’t provide. It wasn’t really a breakup per se. Knowing how important Alexandra was to me, Jill was willing to spend a sizable chunk of her summer break encouraging our relationship rather than in Disneyland, Vegas, Honolulu, or any of a number of other places that would have been more fun for her.

The first day of our visit, Jill and Glenn stayed at the house with the kids while Alexandra and I went out. What we were doing isn’t important, and in any case, I don’t remember. We had probably taken a drive; it had been months since we’d seen each other, and with three kids about – our one and their two – it wasn’t feasible to find an unoccupied corner of the house for a quick makeout session. Again, I don’t remember the details, but after so much time apart, the sexual tension that came with finally being in the same physical space grew too great to bear and we detoured spontaneously to the empty hotel room where my family and I were staying.

While taking a breather in the midst of some very exciting and long-awaited sex, Alexandra stopped to check her phone and found a text from her husband. I don’t know whether it was something they’d agreed upon beforehand or if Glenn had decided out of the blue, but she was forbidden to go back to the hotel with me. I, of course, was not privy to this; I have to assume that if she knew about it when we left the house she would have told me when I made the suggestion. Anxiety overwhelmed me as we got dressed and, like two teenagers who’d stayed out beyond their curfew, hurried back to the house to face the music.

When we arrived, Glenn wasn’t violent or even loud. While I’m sure he was one to raise his voice if not necessarily his hand in anger, I never saw that side of him. Still, it was apparent that he was angry about what had transpired. Not at me; he quickly made that clear. He was angry at Alexandra, and decisively pulled rank, ordering her into the shower with him in the middle of the afternoon, and for what, exactly, I wasn’t about to ask.

His behavior was shocking even if I didn’t acknowledge it as such at the time. In the moment, I was too busy processing my own guilt with regard to this incident. I blamed myself for getting my partner in trouble with her husband even though I should have placed the blame elsewhere. Depending on whether the prohibition of sex was agreed-upon beforehand or spontaneous, I suppose the blame could have been laid upon Alexandra or Glenn, respectively for the lack of clear communication. Regardless of which possibility is the correct one, much if not all of the blame belongs to Glenn for his inability to handle what he essentially set in motion between Alexandra and I.

Why did this happen? Why had Glenn set such an inexplicable, negligibly-expressed boundary, and then lost control so spectacularly when it was violated? He’d always been supportive of Alexandra’s and my relationship, and it’s not as though they’d closed their marriage since we saw them last. I never got an answer of any kind, though it likely had something to do with the fact that since having her hopes of a similar relationship with Glenn dashed the year before, Jill had moved on. She had no intention of having sex with him during our trip, and warned him of this in advance. If he wasn’t going to get laid, why should his wife and I be allowed to?

This episode is what Jill cites when demonstrating Glenn’s true nature. Publicly he was charming, gregarious, caring, radically left, and feminist, an ally whose progressivism didn’t seem to be merely performative. However, rather than being a one-time lapse, his jealous, controlling behavior was him showing who he really was. It wasn’t the first time he exhibited what I might describe as unusual behavior, though it was the first time I saw anything that I’d consider problematic. The red flags were there, but I didn’t want to acknowledge them.

I am reminded of filmmaker Joss Whedon, whose public persona – and physical appearance – was not unlike Glenn’s. Raised as a radical feminist, Whedon told stories of female characters who are stronger than the male characters with whom they share the screen in television series such as “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, “Dollhouse”, “Firefly”, and “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” The feminist themes in his works inspired an academic field of study, and countless articles and books have been written on gender studies with regard to Joss Whedon’s filmography. For many years, it seemed to fans that a more fiercely feminist male voice in the entertainment industry would never be heard.

Of course, Whedon’s feminist cred turned out to be a shield for antisocial behavior including but not limited to misogyny, racism, and general cruelty inflicted against his cast, crew, and family. In 2017, his ex-wife Kai Cole wrote a blog post in which she exposed him as a serial cheater. Since then, accounts of Whedon’s abuse circulated on social media and in interviews; Charisma Carpenter and Amber Benson told of his toxic behavior during the production of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, while Ray Fisher and Gal Gadot told similar stories about their experience making the Whedon-helmed films Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League.

With the truth about Whedon revealed, former fans began to re-examine his career with knowledge of his true nature in mind. His works were seen to feature sexist tropes and racist stereotypes, trivialize LGBTQ characters, and oversexualize their female characters to appeal to the male gaze. Why had so many of Whedon’s fans failed to find fault with or even notice these elements of his TV series and films until he was revealed to be a misogynist hiding his true nature behind fake feminism? Presumably it was because without the knowledge of this nature, most fans – who had made an enormous emotional investment in those works – simply took the man at face value.

Following Glenn’s tantrum, the rest of the time we spent with him and his family was pleasant. We had dinners out, took a day trip to the beach, and engaged in other fun family activities. Alexandra and I even had a dinner date one night, though no sex was had. Perhaps feeling guilty about his outburst, or alternatively having exerted the necessary control over his wife, Glenn okayed it. But knowing her husband’s duplicitous and jealous nature, and having paid the consequence for disobedience just days earlier, there was no way Alexandra was going to take the risk. Still, it was a fun evening, and given all that I know now, I’m sure she needed it even more than I did.

In the next post, I’ll bring you up to speed. I’ll reveal when, how, and why the friendship ended. I’ll discuss the state of my relationship with Alexandra as well, and perhaps most importantly I will consider the possibility that I was unwittingly a party to the awfulness I didn’t even realize was occurring. The next one’s going to be dark, but I’ll lead with a content warning.

Continued in Part 5.